All along the river, quiet electric trains (both passenger and cargo) move at high speed. This passenger train makes me envious we don’t have more of that type of transportation in Canada.

If you can pronounce this one, you’re better than me…Pfalzgrafenstein. It’s set next to the town of Kaub and was located in the river for one purpose. In ancient times, if you wanted to pass here you had to pay a tax. A cable was strung across the river and if you didn’t pay you weren’t going any further.

Sometimes the simplest systems work best. With all the twists and turns in the Middle Rhine, this simple electronic board tells the oncoming captain where and how big vessels coming around the corner are. At this point of our journey from Budapest to Amsterdam, we are starting to see a lot more traffic but we didn’t see a close call the whole time we were on the deck.

This is the famous Marksburg Castle. Many passengers took advantage of a tour to the castle while others who had been there settled for the city of Koblenz, which is at the mouth of the Moselle and Rhine rivers.

It was a late night for the Kvasir as we moved on to much-anticipated Cologne the next morning.